Amanda (not real name), a popular pole dancer at the club, is an experienced strip dancer having worked in popular clubs in Lagos before moving to Abuja.
Godwin Tsa
It was 11.30pm on a Saturday. I was in one of Abuja’s longest-running lap-dancing clubs. A young lady wearing only basque and French knickers walked past me in a seductive manner.
Normally, I should return that gesture with dagger looks and a few obscenities. But tonight, I was on a mission and soon realised that such a response would derail my mission. I smiled back sheepishly.
Her job was to sell private lap dances and the first step in her sales pitch was to make and maintain eye contact with customers. She walked lavishly to a corner where 13 other ladies in various stages of undress were sitting with lingering looks. They chatted and text on their mobile phones. Some of the dancers were regulars, while others came and left, moving between clubs on regular basis. Dressed in a skimpy white outfit, another lady walked to the podium, with wavering steps. She got hold of a pole and danced languorously. Her name is Amanda (not real name), a popular pole dancer at the club. She is an experienced strip dancer having worked in popular clubs in Lagos before moving to Abuja.
After she was done, I beckoned her to my corner and engaged her in friendly talk over a drink. At age 30, she is currently unemployed and the money she makes dancing goes towards living expenses.
She told Daily Sun she first got into lap dancing over a decade ago when she saw an advert for dancers: “At the time, I worked in a fast-food takeaway and dreamed of being a podium dancer. I ended up working in now defunct Lagos lap-dancing club.
She is upfront about what she does and sees no shame in it. Her family and some of her relations know she is a lap dancer. She sees no reason to hide it from them:
“I’ve been called every name under the sun for being a lap dancer. There’s a lot of jealousy in the estate I live in. Some people can’t handle the fact that I dance to get the money for the things I want.
“I’ve had windows in my house smashed. I’m not a hooker or a prostitute I’m a lap dancer. I go to work, then I go home, I don’t meet up with men after hours, I only dance. Some people are just hypocritical about it. I think it’s about time people started getting over it.”
A graduate of Business Administration, Amanda is a single mother and dances for money to run her home: “I say don’t knock something you haven’t tried. I wouldn’t be upset if my daughter started lap dancing when she’s 17 or older. Most parents would think that’s an awful thing to say. I can say it because I do it and I know it’s not wrong.”
You don’t earn big money in lap dancing. I’m not earning thousands every week, I take the next week off to go shopping. Lap dancing has gone quiet and you can’t earn as much money as before. What I earn by night, I survive on by day.
“You might earn bigger money in the UK where lap dancing and strip clubs are an everyday fact of life. There are super-size strip clubs that men go to in their lunch break. It’s a very different scene to here.
“In any case, it’s fun. People think it’s charming and cheeky – men chasing topless girls around like in a carry-on film. There is a ruthless competition – with women resorting to masturbating for the customers or ignoring no-touching rules to earn enough to pay the fees.”
Although she drinks and smokes, she told Daily Sun she does not engage in open sex. At the end of the chat, I paid her off.
At the other end of the hall, a lady danced erotically for a middle aged man, stripping out of that skimpy pink outfit and placing parts of her body in his lap and face that are normally reserved for lovers. In few minutes, she stripped totally and stepped away. She is chocolate and her radiating smiles caught the attention of many.
I walked up to her and invited her to my seat. She said would be with me in a couple of minutes. I walked back and waited. While waiting, my eyes went round and caught up with a male customer in a salesman’s suit. He complained loudly about the lap-dance prices. Up on the stage, some ladies were performing to the admiration of their fans.
It was a typically quiet night. There were maybe half a dozen male customers, including an Italian and an Irish guy in his late 30s.
After 15 minutes of waiting, she showed up. She is Kate (not real name). After offering her some drinks, we chatted. She told me how she dropped out of secondary school because “my parents died in a motor accident, when I was in JSS2. After their deaths, I dropped out of school to take care of my siblings.
“It isn’t really a job for me, it’s a hobby. I love pole dancing and I like coming in here to practice. It gets me out of the house, keeps me sane.
“I love coming into the club. You make friends with the other girls. Everyone has problems and you can come in and talk to the other girls or have a good cry.
“We’re our own bosses. We all work differently but I don’t see the other girls as competition, we get on well together. The club manager is easy-going and takes an interest in us.”
As for how much she rakes in a day, Kate revealed, “I might pull N10, 000 a night or maybe just N5000 or N6000. There are nights when I earn nothing and it doesn’t bother me, I know I’ll earn money sooner or later.
“It is not an easy job because some men are just crazy. When I started, I used to drink heavily before going on stage, but now, I can do it without any influence. There is something uncomfortable and unbalanced in a fully clothed man paying a woman to go naked.”
Naively, she believed the dancing would be fun, glamorous and she would be able to pick her customers: “Sometimes I was really repulsed because they had been drinking so heavily, but also it was age.
“When it was for someone 45 and above I would have in my head: ‘You probably have a daughter.’ I would make a moral judgment on them, but I would still dance for them. And I think this can be psychologically damaging because it becomes a question of what you will do for money.
“It’s like an abusive relationship where you get worn down slowly – your morality gets worn down, your self esteem gets worn down.
But you are there because you have put yourself there. That’s what can be damaging.”
Next was a Ghanaian lady dancer, Emily, who confessed: “There’s something psychologically unhealthy about it. All you have done is pick the woman you think is the most attractive and pay her – but now you want a round of applause, isn’t that strange?”
Emily described punters who came straight from lap-dancing clubs as unwilling to acknowledge that women are human or individual: “There was a very aggressive ‘pack mentality’. They would make very degrading comments about the way that women looked. They would invariably ask for group sex – it seemed important for them to have sex in front of their friends.”
She confessed that in fully nude clubs, women would do handstands while spreading their legs, or allow customers to touch them: “To me, the often-rehearsed idea that lap-dancing can be empowering, or make women feel beautiful is nonsense, when explicit insults are common.”
Nearly all the lap-dancers who spoke with Daily Sun complained of frequent verbal harassment and unwanted touching: “They call you names, comment on your body, or your cellulite, and certainly [I know] from other women’s experiences, comment on your genitalia saying ‘that’s big.’
“How can you raise your self esteem through that? If you are going to take the compliments you have to take the insults.”
Others tell of security staff and managers turning a blind eye to men groping, insulting or even threatening the women.